“Yes,Ido know, but you shouldn’t have one and twenty ways to sayswiving. What sort of education did you get at that Ladies’ Seminary?”
Miranda stomped her foot. Her own husband didn’t know her very well.
“That was my sister,” she finished on a hiss.
“I was speaking in jest. Why are you angry?”
“Isn’t that all we were doing? The same as you’ve done with every other lady of your acquaintance?”
“Noteverylady, no.” He was mocking her, and it sent her ire into a glimflashy passion.
“Each one with whom you graced with your ... your manly parts, I mean. Every time you had a flyer, as we just did, still dressed, or you gave some woman a green gown on the grass of a Mayfair mansion in the darkness.”
Miranda was getting worked up, but the notion she’d married a hell-hound who might as easily have married any other woman who’d written a stupid story about him hit her like a bag of Brighton pebbles.
Philip crossed the room in two strides and took hold of her.
“Tell me truly, wife, why are you angry?” he asked.
“Because I never wanted to end up married to a man who did not want to marry me, fervently and ardently and with his whole heart.” She shook herself free of him because just his fingers gripping her upper arms made her desire him again.
He was an obsession for her, just as much as those who couldn’t get enough gin or cheese or sponge-cake.
“I never thought I would be envious of Miss Waltham, but she gets to marry a man who loves her, while I am hand-fast to a rake.”
“Well then!” he exclaimed, stomping across the room, looking childish. “I guess we both have cause to hiss and shout.”
“Truly?” she snapped, standing stiffly in the middle of the salon while a case of the blue devils and the red furies mingled together inside her. “And why areyouangry? You have your precious brandy business back.”
“Because I never wanted to be forced into marriage without the opportunity to ask for the hand of the woman I love,” he raged before her like a gathering thunderstorm. “I’ve ended up leg-shackled to someone who doesn’t love me but looks upon me as nothing but a buck of the first head who allows his cock to rule him!”
She cringed at his bitter tone, but then stamped her foot again. He spoke as if he was the only one whose dreams had been dashed. But then she replayed his words for she’d heard him mention love.
“Are you saying you wished you could have asked some woman whom you love to marry you, or are you saying you wished you had been able to ask me properly for my hand?”
“Yours, of course!” he snapped. “You are the only woman I love. And instead of getting to do it right, on my knees or at least presenting you with a ring as a token, I had to endure an exhausting trip, a silent, surly bride, and an ugly ‘bishop.’”
A bubble of laughter escaped her.
“My disillusionment is amusing to you, is it? Just because I’ve been raffish in the past does not mean I don’t have deep feelings, or that they cannot be wounded.”
Miranda took a step toward him.
“I know that, Philip.”
His glance shot to hers, his gorgeous coffee-brown eyes widened.
“I promise you haven’t ended up leg-shackled to a woman who does not love you. For I do. With my whole heart, I do.”
Dropping her reticule and theTête-à-Têteupon the floor, she rushed at him. Luckily, he opened his arms as she reached him or they would have gone tumbling over the lamp table and into the hearth.
“Say it,” she demanded.
“I love you,” he answered. And then he dropped to his knees, clenching both of her hands in his.
“Will you be my wife for the rest of our days, keeping yourself only to me?”
“I will,” she whispered, with tears pricking her eyes so she could hardly see him. “And you?”
